Fug Girls: Mint Juleps and Droopy Models at Whitney Eve

As expected, the Whitney Eve show downtown on Saturday night felt less about the accomplishments of a young designer and more about trying to figure out what angle the crews from The City were working as they trailed Whitney Port through the room. When we last saw La Port chewing on her lip and staring off into middle distance to the beat of sickeningly hip music, she was deciding whether or not to leave the figurative womb of Kelly Cutrone’s People’s Revolution for the more aggressively pink representation of Alison Brod. After some cunning detective work, we’re guessing Brod was the answer: There was a giant boom mike suspended over her head for most of the night as she carried on energetic conversations and made introductions for Whitney, and a camera was trained on her face. What can we say? We notice things, you know?

Port and Brod did throw a nice party: The models arranged themselves on a lit dais along one wall, with a bar tucked off to the left serving mint juleps, and a table of iced cake bites and tiny waffle cones piped full of brightly colored frosting. We overheard Port’s City castmate, Bergdorf’s buyer Samantha, up-talking with her friends (“Alexander Wang? Is fabulous?”) while wearing a black Whitney Eve dress and a stark, messy topknot, the likes of which ought to be paired with a smudged smock and have paintbrushes sticking out of it. A handful of vaguely familiar, vaguely attractive dudes who could’ve been any one of Whitney’s TV boyfriends paraded through the venue as well — one of whom actually was her current squeeze, Ben Nemtin of MTV’s The Buried Life. And British personality Louise Roe, who swung by The City this past season to strike professional fear into the heart of villainess Olivia Palermo, showed up to hug and kiss Port, and also to wear a beige bowler hat. Olivia herself, obviously, was nowhere to be found, but we’re sure she would’ve been hatless at least. That’s a point for her.

Port, in a fairly awkward olive satin jumpsuit that cinched around the ankles (which, in fairness, did hang well on her, perhaps because she has the figure of a model herself), maintained a very humble and pensive demeanor as she gave interviews about the clothes. She said she looked to her friends for inspiration, and modeled her line after “a girl who wants to follow her dreams, but look good doing it,” which sounds like pleasant fashion code for, “I basically just tried really hard not to make it ugly.” But Whitney balked when a reporter asked how it felt now that she’s made it. “I’m still just trying to get my line out there, to get it seen,” Port insisted. “I haven’t made it yet, by any means.” Then she glanced absently over at her models during the next question. “Sorry, I had to check on my models,” she apologized. “They’re starting to droop a bit.” Aw. Wherever Kelly Cutrone may have been tonight — we didn’t see her at the party while we were there — at least she taught her girl well.